Got a start on the course so I'm now trying to catch up on the 'news', if it could be called 'news' these days. There's a lot going on politically and so I'm sitting here tonight watching Panorama. I'm old enough to remember when Panorama was a serious programme with real journalists, sadly, that time has long passed and all we get now is propaganda and not even very good propaganda at that. Tonight's show is a rather pathetic piece of anti-North Korean propaganda filled with dead-eyed commentators trotting out the same old clap-trap.
Now, I'm not labouring under the illusion that North Korea is some sort of utopian state but the opening of the show talked about North Korea threatening nuclear war. As I recall, it's the US threatening NK. We are just being pumped with the same old propaganda we had before the Iraqi invasion.
I actually watched a piece online a few weeks ago where a South Korean village was protesting against the US deployment of the Thaad Missile System and there are numerous videos online showing South Korean protests against the US but did any of them appear on Panorama? No, of course, they didn't. Gone are the days of fair and balanced reporting.
At least with the internet, we can now seek out the news for ourselves. Meanwhile, far away from dictatorships, over here in the 'free and democratic' west, Catalans are being beat out of polling booths for daring to try and exercise their right to have political control over their land and lives. And over in the land of the 'bully' and home of the 'deluded', another mass shooting. And just when you think it couldn't get any worse, up pops the Tory Party Conference!!